


Does That Mean He's Happy?

by Kami



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kami/pseuds/Kami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dumbledore reveals something unexpected to Harry, who of course tells his friends. They in turn do what comes naturally. Chaos results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Does That Mean He's Happy?

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a certain something Rowling revealed after _Deathly Hallows_ was out and read by those of us who were paranoid about our experience being spoilered. I couldn't help imagining how the revelation would have been dealt with if it had actually come up in the books.

“Remember, Harry,” said Dumbledore, looking down at him without even a hint of humour in his eyes, but with a great deal of kindness. “I don’t mean to imply you’ve done anything wrong; I believe Severus may have taken matters a little too far on this occasion.” Just on _this_ occasion, _ha_. “But all the same it bears saying, learning a measure of self-restraint now will serve you well in the future.”

  


Harry wished a hole could open up and swallow him - he wasn’t all that sure he just meant it figuratively, either. This was without question the most personally mortifying day of his life, an achievement in itself.

  


To think it had started off excellently, with a prank on Malfoy turning out _perfectly_ (as far as he knew, he was still sprinting about Hogwarts trying to find some place soundproof enough to stifle super-loud farts), Potions not being a complete disaster and Hermione and Ron being less unbearably weird than of late. And Ginny had pulled him aside after class and suggested that he could probably take an hour off studying, by which point things were looking about as perfect as he could imagine.

  


And then, some time later, he’d come up for air in that damp, prickly little nook on the grounds that Ginny insisted was perfectly romantic enough, and spotted Snape peering over the bushes at them. He thought it was about then that things took an abrupt nosedive.

  


At least Dumbledore had accepted that Ginny’s top had just ridden up of its own accord and not through any foul play on his part, but he still seemed to think a lecture was in order. And his headmaster was probably the person he could least stomach a ‘birds and bees’ dialogue with. Equal first with Snape, Hagrid and his uncle.

  


“I know I am probably very high up on your list of people you would rather not have this conversation with,” Dumbledore continued. He _hated_ the way Dumbledore always anticipated his feelings and then walked over them anyway. “And we can both agree you haven’t broken any rules today, although I _would_ prefer if you conducted your affairs indoors. There are far too many unfortunate stories involving lovers and forests for a couple to be entirely easy these days.”

  


Just a warning about being eaten? That was more bearable than the more juicy alternatives he’d been anticipating.

  


“But most importantly, as I was saying, it is of utmost importance to be able to regulate one’s passions.”

  


Harry couldn’t stifle a mortified groan.

  


“_Especially_ as a wizard who will likely wield great power and consequence in the future,” Dumbledore stressed. He was about as serious as Harry had ever seen him. “It is important to be able to follow one’s intellect against one’s body, at a moment’s notice if need be.”

  


Could this _get_ any worse? “I haven’t let _anything_ get in the way of my studying, if that’s what you’re...”

  


“No, Harry, nothing of the sort. It was simply something I wanted you to have the opportunity to consider, perhaps privately. It may seem intrusive and embarrassing now, but I can confidently assure you there are many wizards this very minute who would have made great use of the advice had it been offered to them at the right time.”

  


Something about the tone of Dumbledore’s voice got Harry thinking along _very_ unusual lines. He spoke before he could lose his nerve. “Professor Dumbledore... are _you_ one of those wizards? Was there a girl that you...?”

  


“No,” said Dumbledore. “There was no girl.”

  


If he’d laughed at him Harry couldn’t have felt more embarrassed. What had he been thinking even _asking_? Not a whole lot obviously, but he was doing a great job of proving that he needed the advice Dumbledore was dispensing.

  


“I...”

  


“There was, however, a boy. Many years ago.” Dumbledore was wearing yet another expression he’d never quite seen before, nor expected to see on that face. “Yes, it is with experience that I attempt to offer you this advice.”

  


Forget worrying over new expressions! “A... BOY!”

  


“Yes, a boy. I have been comfortably and happily attracted to men all my life. Does that bother you?”

  


“No, no... of course not!” Harry stammered all over the place. “It’s just... I was surprised. I never...”

  


“I understand,” said Dumbledore. “And I hope now you understand that I am speaking from the most unenviable position of experience, and keep what I have said in mind.”

  


“Oh, I will. I will.” It seemed to be the only way to get out of there, and _boy_ did Harry need to get out of there. Boy. Oh dear.

  


Dumbledore was finally smiling. “Very well, Harry. You may go.”

  


Harry didn’t wait for a more elaborate dismissal. He was out of there, and for the first time he didn’t deliberately drag his feet in order to ogle the curiosities of Dumbledore’s office as he departed.

  


  


  


  


  


“_Gay_. He goes for... Are you _sure_ you heard this right?”

  


Harry nodded. “He said a boy. He said men. There’s no chance I misunderstood.”

  


Ron whistled. “This is _huge_.”

  


“What’s huge?” asked Hermione as she arrived. She dumped her stack of study materials across the middle of the table - suddenly, Harry couldn’t see Ron at all.

  


“Dumbledore’s gay,” he heard him inform Hermione. “He told Harry when he was telling him off over...” He choked, and turned a few subtle colours. “You know what.”

  


The volume in the room jumped as people began rising from their seats.

  


“I said you know _what_!” said Ron loudly, and the clamour immediately subsided. “Cripes, some of the people here...”

  


“You’re sure that’s what he told you?” Hermione asked. “You weren’t just drifting and heard what you _wanted_ to hear?”

  


“For goodness sake Hermione,” Harry growled, “why would I _want_ to hear that?”

  


“Do you have a problem with it, then?” Hermione raised one eyebrow. Harry began to smell trouble.

  


“No! I mean, it was a big surprise, but I don’t have anything against... _that_ kind of person. Whatever makes him happy... it’s none of my business, anyway.” Could the conversation possibly get _more_ uncomfortable?

  


Hermione got a look on her face that, on previous occasions, had ended in badges and weird acronyms. “Being gay doesn’t make someone a different kind of person, you know. Who a person happens to want to... er, _you_...” She glanced around at the other occupants of the room, “...er, _know_... well, that’s nothing. It’s private, it’s nobody else’s business. Except as information that might help you understand them better, maybe.”

  


Some books slipped off the top of the pile on the table to admit Ron’s face. “Geez, you’re awfully in the know about this, Hermione. _You_ aren’t... one of them, are you?”

  


Hermione glared at him. “Were they all out of ‘slightly thick’ when you were born?”

  


“I don’t think she is, Ron,” said Harry quietly when he couldn’t take the weird vibe between them any more.

  


“Oh.” Ron still looked baffled, but he seemed to have accepted that answer. “Anyway... do you suppose he’s got a, a you... a _person_ somewhere? A boyfriend?”

  


“No idea,” said Harry. “He didn’t tell me anything about _that_, obviously.”

  


“Just leave it alone then,” Hermione said. “He has a right to express his sexuality without the lot of you speculating about it.”

  


“What are you talking about?” said Ron. “The other week we were talking about whether we thought the professors were married or not, and you joined right in. I’m sure we talked about Dumbledore then - didn’t we, Harry?”

  


“Oh, _no_,” said Harry.

  


“Funny, I could _swear_ we mentioned him a couple times...”

  


Harry shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean about _that_. I was just thinking, and... Snape.”

  


“Oh, _no_,” said Ron.

  


“You think he’s going out with _Snape_?” Hermione reached for her books. “I’d better go study somewhere else. Whatever’s in your heads at the moment might be able to jump.”

  


Ron stalled her retreat by grabbing her arm. “_Think_ about it, Hermione. Nobody likes Snape and Snape doesn’t really seem to like anybody back, but him and Dumbledore get along great. Nobody trusts Snape, but Dumbledore does. Snape always runs to Dumbledore if there’s something wrong...”

  


Hermione rose up in her seat in what Harry privately thought of as her high horse mime. “Just because you two are always getting into trouble with him is no...” She slipped down a few inches. “Actually... you have some good points there. They do seem to spend a lot of time together. And sometimes...” She gulped, and pressed her lips tightly together.

  


“C’mon, Herm,” said Ron. “We won’t tell if you don’t.”

  


“Well... I always used to think that there was a strange aura around the two of them when they were together. Like they had a big secret that nobody else was in on.”

  


A shadow fell across the table. Harry looked up to see Ginny, who blushed a little as she met his eyes but was grinning. The one thing he’d been worried about was how he was going to explain his innocence to _her_, but it looked as though he wouldn’t need to.

  


Ron, on the other hand, looked like he could do with a good heart-to-heart whenever he could get him alone.

  


“Hi,” said Ginny. “I was just going to meet someone... but you lot looked so serious, what’s up?”

  


“Dumbledore’s gay with Snape,” said Ron. “He told Harry.”

  


“He didn’t tell me all _that_!” Harry protested. “He said he was gay, but he never said anything about Snape. It just...”

  


“It makes a lot of sense,” Ron finished.

  


Ginny’s jaw hit the table. “He really said he was gay? You’re sure you didn’t make a mistake?”

  


Hermione rose to lasso an unoccupied chair from the nearest table. “I think you’d better get comfortable.” Which Ginny quickly did, swinging around to face Harry with a rather disturbing look of interest on her face. And he was pretty used to having her full attention.

  


“So it’s really true?”

  


“Really,” said Harry. “He said there was some boy he had a thing for a long time ago, and then he said he’d been attracted to men all his life. Don’t ask me how the topic came up.”

  


“I can guess.” Ginny winced. “But... _Snape_?”

  


“It just makes sense,” said Ron.

  


Ginny glanced at Hermione, who shrugged. “I was skeptical too, but it would explain a lot.”

  


“This is big,” said Ginny, chewing on the end of her hair. “This is _really_ big. It’s so strange that he just said it to you like that, Harry. It’s like he’s been wanting to reveal it for some time, but was waiting for the perfect opportunity to let it slip.”

  


“Actually, I got the impression he just doesn’t care if people know or not,” Harry said. Nobody seemed to hear him.

  


“Do you think he needs some help getting it out there?” said Hermione. “I suppose a lot of the professors must already know, especially if it’s him and Snape... but kids can be _so_ immature.”

  


“_No_,” said Harry, standing up to get their attention. “No telling anybody. If it turns out he didn’t want it getting out, he’ll remember he told me and he might decide to start taking Snape’s advice in the future.”

  


“But did he _say_ you weren’t to tell anyone else?” Ginny pressed.

  


“Well no. He didn’t say anything. But some things are beyond needing to tell a person!”

  


“Harry does have a point,” Hermione mused. “Perhaps he only intended for Harry to know.”

  


“Oh, _piffle_,” retorted Ron, so loudly that more people looked alarmed than had over the _you know_... incident. “Dumbledore has to know that Harry tells me and Hermione _everything_. The Three... what was it they were calling us, again?”

  


“_Piffle_?” Ginny rolled her eyes.

  


“Well I have told you now,” said Harry, “so there’s no point in debating over that. But I’d appreciate it if nobody told anyone else _any_ of this. I already have enough reasons to worry about surviving to adulthood.”

  


And thinking about _that_ made him so nervous, he took the added step of extracting a clear promise from each of the three present. Ginny didn’t look nearly so fond of him as she had at a certain point earlier that day. Thankfully she stayed a little longer to talk to Hermione, and her mood gradually seemed to improve.

  


“I had _no_ idea,” she was saying a whole lot. “Did you suspect, Hermione?”

  


“Not at all,” said Hermione. “But now I know... it really fits. A lot of little things make so much more sense.”

  


Harry inched around the table to get closer to Ron. “Why are _they_ so excited about it?”

  


Ron shrugged. “Girls. Even if it _is_ Snape, if they could watch they would.”

  


Which Harry didn’t quite understand, but decided to let it go. He felt like he’d narrowly escaped a lot of trouble that day, and you didn’t press your luck when you happened to be a bloke who needed to stockpile as much of it as he could get.

  


  


  


  


  


Harry knew the day after that fateful one was going to be as disastrous as the previous had been fortunate, right from the moment a Ravenclaw first-year girl approached him on the stairs to ask if it were really true about Snape and Dumbledore. Well, he gathered that was what she was trying to ask through all the giggles and glances back at her friends.

  


Three more girls stopped him to ask the same question on the way to his first class, only one of whom he actually knew by name. He thought he’d seen another of them in the group that Ginny usually hung out with.

  


And they weren’t the only signs that it was not shaping up to be his day. He’d never really paid much attention to how things were normally, but it seemed that day there were a lot more students - female _and_ male - staring at him as he passed and muttering to their friends. _Dumbledore... Snape_... kept coming to his ears, though he was making an effort not to think too much of either of them.

  


Before Potions, he dragged Ron aside. He had a funny feeling he might be able to shed some light on the strangeness stalking him that day. Well, at first Ron insisted he had nothing to do with whatever was going on, but his face slowly lengthened as the conversation went on, and eventually he confessed.

  


“I had to tell a _few_ people!” he whined. “This was too good to keep to myself!”

  


It seemed as though the mystery was solved, but a glimpse of Ginny in the hallway wearing an expression too close to Ron’s to be explained away by family resemblance prompted Harry to pursue her and ask her the same questions he’d just asked Ron - in a lot nicer language, of course.

  


“Well,” retorted Ginny, “you told _your_ friends.”

  


Several words later, Harry was fairly sure he didn’t need to worry about being caught doing anything inappropriate on school grounds in the near future.

  


When Luna Lovegood was suddenly in his face around a corner, he could only say, “Not _you_ as well!”

  


“I heard that Dumbledore told you he was happy,” said Luna. “Yesterday. But does that mean he hadn’t been happy here all this time?”

  


Harry tried to very diplomatically explain to Luna what was actually _meant_ by the word, but she was too distressed by the idea of Dumbledore languishing at Hogwarts all those years in misery to take much of it in. His human relations lecture evolved into a dedicated but futile attempt to excuse himself, which was eventually helped by the sudden appearance of Snape and a sentence that brought genuine fear right to his bones. “Potter. Into the classroom. I would like to speak with you _privately_.”

  


_With_ him. _With_ meant he had to talk back. _With_ was much more dangerous than _to_.

  


As he followed close on Snape’s heels to avoid attracting too much attention, Harry groped about for something clever to say - as opposed to the usual smartness that would just get him into even more trouble. Nothing came to mind... except, suddenly, something he would never have usually resorted to. He would have bet the prospect of being alone in a room with an angry Potions master would have struck fear into even Dumbledore. Unless Dumbledore had reasons to like being alone in a room with Snape, even when he was mad... oh, _no_. Not that place again.

  


“Professor Snape,” he said loudly, more to drown out his own brain than... Snape grunted, and he had to go on. “I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry about... what happened yesterday. Dumbledore reminded me of the dangers of wandering off outside, and I realise you were only looking out for my best interests. I assure you that I have learned my lesson and I will not make the same mistake again.”

  


“Hm,” said Snape, which didn’t seem like the typical scathing Snape response. Harry braced himself for the rest of it. Outside the classroom door they passed Malfoy and his usual goons, who all greeted Harry with a big smile. Which was just great. Somehow, being in trouble wasn’t half as much trouble so long as Malfoy didn’t find out about it.

  


Snape opened the door for him. Even worse. “Inside, Potter.”

  


Harry quickly obeyed, and Snape followed at his leisure. First he shut and bolted the door, then he spent some time circling the room muttering under his breath, either checking for concealed enchantments or trying to unnerve Harry, probably both.

  


“So,” he finally said with his back turned, so quietly Harry almost didn’t tune in. “Dumbledore confides in you a lot, eh Potter? Tells you all his deepest, darkest secrets?”

  


Already Harry did _not_ like the direction this was going in. “Uh... no. No, I don’t imagine he does, not any more than anyone else, anyway.”

  


“Is that so?” Snape abruptly spun and advanced on Harry, who backed up against the furthest wall. His wand... where was his wand? “You know, Potter, that’s awfully _strange_, because it’s come to my attention today that an interesting story is circulating the school. About my... _sordid_ doings with our Headmaster. Wouldn’t happen to know anything about that story, would you Potter?”

  


_It was Ron! Ron! Just tell him_... “Of course not, Professor Snape,” he said more politely than he’d ever imagined himself capable. “How would I even know anything about that?”

  


Snape actually began shooting sparks out of his ears. “I am on to you, Potter!” _On to you_... Unfortunate wording. He couldn’t... he _wouldn’t_ let it show... “Just so it is absolutely clear, I do not appreciate being the subject of your little schoolmates’ juvenile discussions, especially not when my name is coupled with that of other staff.”

  


“I never did anything,” said Harry. “But I understand completely.”

  


Snape stared at him for several seconds, then turned away. “I shall choose to believe you for now, Potter. _However_, if I receive any information that suggests you were telling untruths...”

  


There was an unexpected, almost premonitionary silence, and the door shot off its hinges with a loud bang. When the dust cleared, Neville Longbottom was filling the doorway with his wand slightly upraised, and his bottom jaw in the opposite position.

  


“Whew!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to do _that_. I thought it was stuck... Oh, Harry! I was looking for you.” Before Harry had a hope of thinking of a signal both subtle and obvious enough that Neville would get it, Neville was in the room and even before his mouth started moving Harry knew what it was going to produce. “I wanted to find out for myself. Ron was telling me that Dumbledore told you that him and Professor Snape were, er... oh.” Neville’s eyes lighted on the other occupant of the room. “Hello, Professor Snape, I didn’t realise you were...” He glanced back at Harry. “Um. Have I...?”

  


Well, at least there was still the chance of Neville being able to report back to his friends and Ginny that he’d gone down like a hero. And hopefully, not shrieking like a little girl.


End file.
